


will wonders ever cease

by theonlytwin



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, Non-Chronological, soft as heck, they've been in love for so long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-27 21:44:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13889733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theonlytwin/pseuds/theonlytwin
Summary: Gai hasn’t seen Kakashi’s face, exactly.





	will wonders ever cease

**Author's Note:**

> thank youuu to valcries and faorism for beta reading my first ever anime thing

“They’re going to carve Kakashi-sensei’s face into the mountain with the mask and all,” Naruto complains, during one hospital visit. “That’s just! Crazy!”

“I admire your youthful curiosity, but as a future Hokage, should you not show your former teacher some respect for his decision?” Gai asks, halfway along the balance bars.

“Mmmaybe - but that’s exactly why I should know! I should know all the things about all the Hokages!”

“If they were even remotely relevant to your leadership, maybe,” Sakura says from behind her clipboard.

“Gai-senpai!” Naruto pops in between the bars, eyes wide. “You’ve known him forever! You must know what he’s hiding!”

“Gai-senpai is recovering,” Sakura smacks the future Hokage on the back of the head with her clipboard. “Not revealing secrets!”

“Ha, I do not think it is my secret to reveal,” Gai grins through the sweat streaming down his face. 

“What secret?” Kakashi asks, appearing in the window. 

Naruto springs back, waving his hand. “No secret!”

“Does the Hokage know that we have doors at the hospital?” Sakura asks.

Kakashi shrugs as he plants his feet on the floor and slides properly into the room. “People want to talk to me about their bylaws and concerns and how I should have been reading more edifying material in public all those years if I’m meant to be representing the village.”

“The citizens of Konoha would never address their Hokage that way,” Gai protests.

“Well,” he scratches the back of his head, “maybe it was just Anko saying that. But she is a citizen. Perhaps I’ll have her tried for treason or something. If it wasn’t so much paperwork.”

He’s sidled over to the wheelchair, and Gai is almost at the end of the bars. Lap 50, where he used to run a hundred times that before breakfast. 

But - his muscles are knitting and building, slowly, surely. Apart from the leg, every part of him looks set to heal. 

Not so bad, considering he has survived what killed his father. 

***

Gai hasn’t seen Kakashi’s face, exactly. 

He was an expert at not looking at Kakashi’s face even before the sharingan made it dangerous to do so.

He’s seen him covered in mud, dripping wet, recovering from an explosion, in hospital - times when the mask has slipped or been removed through necessity. 

It was burnt off, once, along with Kakashi’s eyebrows and some of his fringe, in an incident immediately deemed top secret and never to be discussed. 

(Kakashi had lived in the woods for a week, Gai and Rin and Obito taking turns to visit him, Minato finally talking him down with a gentle explanation as to why shame over your appearance was secondary to your ability to learn from your mistakes.)

(When Gai started teaching, he modelled himself on Minato as much as his father and Choza - each gentle and strong in different ways, in equal measure.)

Whenever Kakashi has been without his mask, Gai averted his eyes, or kept them shut. He was polite and sporting. 

He’s felt it, in the dark - his nose and cheeks and chin and lips, maybe lined with moonlight or a dwindling campfire. 

Kakashi’s fine face has been pressed, bare, to Gai’s neck and chest and thighs, but he’s never really gotten a good look at it. Not without distraction. Not on purpose. Not with permission.

So it doesn’t count.

***

“Has my rival done enough exercises to earn a rest?” Kakashi asks. 

“I do not need to rest! I could do fifty more laps,” Gai announces, holding himself carefully upright. 

“Actually, that’s more likely to do harm than good at this point,” Sakura tells him, “and a rest is medically advised.”

“I feel buoyed up by my training,” he insists, “I could continue for another hour!” And he could. He has. It would hurt, and he knows how to be hurt. It may do harm, but he’s had harm done. He is the Green Beast. He survived all Eight Gates, he could survive a few more laps up and down the balance bars.

Sakura glances up at him, a neutral face, and Naruto looks sideways at her. 

They’re worried. He can’t have them be worried. He could survive another lap, but he couldn’t survive them worrying for him.

“It’s medical advice, Gai,” Kakashi says, smiling behind his mask.

“And it is always good to follow advice!” Gai agrees, giving a thumbs up before he eases into his wheelchair.

“Mmhm,” Kakashi says. 

“My rival makes these smug, cool noises,” Gai grumbles, “even when he is Hokage.”

“Are you not a citizen of the village?” He tilts the wheelchair slightly back so he can peer down at Gai. “Speaking to me in such a way.”

***

He makes tiny, dear noises when Gai kisses him - quiet and gentle murmurs, happy whimpers - that were a joyous surprise when Gai first discovered them, nineteen and sweaty in the dark of Kakashi’s bedroom.

(It was not the first time they were... intimate. 

It was the first time they had been private and patient, though - the first time it was planned, not just grinding together after a somehow unsatisfying challenge, adrenaline high and edgy, or shyly twining their limbs in the lake during a night swim, or half naked and holding their hands over each others’ mouths on a Konoha rooftop while they hid from Ebisu and Genma.)

“My rival,” Gai kissed the corner of his eye, the rise of his cheekbone, the point of his jaw, finding them by feel, “is extremely cute.”

“If you ever say that again” Kakashi muttered, mouth pressed to Gai’s forehead, “I will gag you.”

“You may try,” Gai told him, and kissed his thyroid bone very carefully. 

(He never gags Gai. They found other uses for his mouth.)

***

“I sincerely apologise, Hokage-sama,” Gai says, “I momentarily forgot my place. Perhaps you should have me charged with treason.”

“Probably!” Kakashi agrees, genially. “C’mon.”

Gai gets his hands on his wheels, follows him out of the room after farewelling Naruto and Sakura, who are bickering about something. 

“Where are we going today, Kakashi?”

“You mentioned you wanted some air, the other day.” 

He had. The hospital, though frequently and efficiently cleaned, smells of boiled cabbage all the time. It smelt like boiled cabbage when Gai was twelve, after he first activated the gates, and it somehow still smells of boiled cabbage after being demolished and rebuilt.

“And you’re confined to the hospital a few days more, but I thought,” he presses the up button on the elevator, “no one could complain if we don’t actually leave.” 

Gai is confined because the medics want to keep an eye on him as long as possible. Rock Lee and Naruto are meant to be helping Sakura find out more about the Gates, but Naruto is also meant to be doing lots of things and Lee is leading repair teams, and of course: no one really knows what happened. Nothing like this has ever happened before. With any luck, it never will again.

“The elevator does not go to the roof, rival.”

“Doesn’t it?” he smiles as he steps in. 

Gai follows, as he always has.

***

They’re twenty-something before they actually spend the night together.

(They had used the spend the night together, as children, innocent. When his father died, Kakashi had let Gai stay at his house for a week. But then they graduated to having sex in beds. Convenient, in many ways, though Kakashi was always gone by morning.)

He’s come back from some three week mission - no visible wounds, but a deadness behind his eyes that reminds Gai of the Root days. 

(He hasn’t found a team he likes, so he’s still leading missions.)

He’s come back and cooked Gai dinner, so the first warning Gai gets is the smell of frying fish as he climbs his stairs.

“Have we entered a cooking challenge?” Gai asks.

“All my dishes are still dirty. I didn’t do any washing up before I left.”

This is believable. Kakashi is a genius, and claims that it’s genius to leave dishes to other people.

Gai is going to say something very cutting about a maid service, but Kakashi’s shoulders are tight, his ankles tense.

They eat the fish, and Kakashi pours them both beer. He sits with it at the end of his arm and blinks, slowly.

“Kakashi? Did something... happen?”

“Kota died.”

Gai can’t quite bring a face to mind - was he the one with the shaved head and mole, or the buck toothed one who favoured his left fist? Four or five years below them, he thinks. But it doesn’t matter. Any loss hurts.

“I’m sorry.”

Kakashi nods, then tips sideways, resting his head on Gai’s shoulder, sighs.

Gai folds their hands together.

They move, by increments, into Gai’s bedroom, and Kakashi undresses like it’s laborious.

Gai turns the light off so he can peel away the mask, kiss under each of his eyes. Kakashi is silent, so Gai draws him down, into bed, gathers him to his chest, fingers spread along his spine. 

Kakashi breathes shallowly. 

“It was not your fault.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do. Because I know you.”

Kakashi shudders, presses his face into Gai’s neck.

(He’s still there in the morning, hot, stale breath and long limbs. He kisses Gai’s cheek before he gets up, and boils water. 

By the time Gai’s eyes are open, the mask is on and the tea is steaming.)

***

They emerge into the upper floor, and Gai tips his face toward the sun, flooding through the west window.

“I saw Tenten this morning. She’s coming tomorrow. With a fruit basket.” 

“Our precious students are so dutiful.” He feels the absence in that statement. The loss of Neji is still a surprise which he realises moment to moment. He swallows the grief and smiles. “I have had visitors and gifts every day.”

“You once told me that teaching students was the most important thing a shinobi could do.” 

Gai remembers. It had been part of his whole campaign to get Kakashi to risk his life and sanity less.

***

When Gai had been rejected from ANBU, he had challenged Kakashi to a duel that left them both gasping for breath, bloodied, hands around each other’s dicks halfway up a tree. 

(Which, later, when he’s calmer, Gai recognises is pretty messed up! But at the time it had been very necessary.)

Neither of them undressed, and Kakashi’s mask was up the whole time.

“It’s better,” Kakashi had whispered, later, when they were slumped on the grass, “if you’re outside ANBU.”

Gai punched him on the arm. “You are my rival and I should be allowed to keep you safe!”

“You do,” Kakashi told him. “Because of this.”

Gai knew what he meant, but wanted, in this strange, vulnerable moment, some confirmation. “Because of sex acts?”

Kakashi huffed a sigh - either at Gai’s guess or his phrasing - and scrubbed his hand against the grass again. “No. Because we are friends.”

Gai had smiled. Kakashi only stared up at the sunny sky. He is very good to look at, Gai thought. His unruly hair glowed in the day’s bright light.

“We’ve don’t do,” Kakashi mumbled, pausing minutely, “sex acts that often.” 

He had almost refused to use the correct terminology, Gai knew, but his rival is not a coward. Neither of them are.

“We could - do. Sex acts. More?” Gai offered.

Kakashi looked at him, eye wide, nodded, just once. 

Eventually, he said, “Indoors, though. Not... during challenges.”

(A few days later, Gai watched Kakashi and young Uchiha kill a dozen shinobi in cold blood, and thought - _ANBU is not safe at all._

Kakashi’s genius and empathy and gentle, heavily disguised, patience - these were being wasted on assassinations.)

***

“I did say that - and I was right! Your students have saved the village so many times over!”

“They saved you,” Kakashi says, lightly. Too lightly. 

“They saved us all,” Gai says to break the suddenly tense silence. 

“Mmm.” He opens the window, turns to Gai. “I’ll give you a lift?”

Gai stretches his arms up.

***

There was a challenge, at some point, when they were young, about each carrying the other up the mountain in a certain amount of time.

It was probably because Kakashi wanted a nap, or something, because he refused to be carried where Gai could see his face - so he rode up the slope with his cheek pressed against Gai’s back. 

When it was his turn, Kakashi had complained that Gai’s feet dug into his stomach - but Gai wouldn’t let him forfeit, so Kakashi carried Gai up the mountain bridal style. 

This became, somehow, a running joke. 

Gai carries Kakashi like a sack of potatoes. 

Kakashi carries Gai like a blushing newlywed.

(Gai remembers falling on his face after a mission, when they were older, rendering himself semi-conscious. He remembers Rock Lee crying and Kakashi giving him a job to send him away. He remembers Kakashi lifting him up, Kakashi leaping smoothly from roof to roof, Kakashi depositing him, slowly, into his own bed. 

Gai had opened his eyes a crack, tugged Kakashi on top of him. 

He hadn’t resisted, settling his head against Gai’s arm. “You need to bathe,” Kakashi had said, after a moment.

“I will. Immediately,” Gai had attempted to sit up, and Kakashi had pressed him back into the bed.

“Later.”

He let Kakashi carry him into the bath as well.)

***

He winds his arms around Kakashi’s neck, and they leap onto the roof.

Lee and Tenten have already brought him a number of designs for lightweight, highly mobile wheelchairs. In some months, he will be at full strength again, and able to climb walls, kick away from floors, get where he needs to be. He’ll probably be able to fill the chair with weapons!

But he has been medically advised to rest, so he puts his ear to Kakashi’s heart and lets the work be done for him. 

“Here,” Kakashi says, and lowers him onto something soft.

There are cushions on the roof.

“You put cushions on the roof,” Gai says, like an idiot.

“Sakura has given me some strict orders about what you should be doing and when.” He sits next to Gai. “Including.”

“Including?”

Kakashi raises an eyebrow, over his new eye, which is his old eye returned. It takes Gai a moment still, and then his brain short circuits.

“Oh! Did you tell your student about our sex acts?”

“Nope.”

That’s a relief. “Ah. Then?”

Kakashi turns and looks at the sky. “I might have. Said something. When I thought. You were dead.”

“You thought I was dead?”

“You opened the Eighth Gate.” It sounds, in the sun, like an accusation.

“I thought it was necessary.”

He looks at Gai. He takes down his mask. 

In the bright light of day, he takes down his mask.

“I’d like to marry you.”

Gai can’t blink. He spent years training himself to avoid Kakashi’s face and now he can’t look away.

“Me?”

Kakashi smiles. Gai’s felt this smile, but here it is, in front of him.

He wants to kiss Kakashi, and wants to look at him. He wants to hold that pale face with its terrible tan lines, and shout.

“You. If you’d like that.”

“I would. Yes. Yes, my dear, dear, Kakashi, yes,” he gives in and kisses him, mouth sweet and soft and present and hands clutching, clinging.

Someone less capable might tip off the roof but this is the Beautiful Green Beast and Sixth Hokage of Konoha. They are perfectly safe and they will be married, as soon as they can agree on a wedding party. 

***

At the end of their first day of rival challenges (Gai won janken, 73-72, and he will win something else tomorrow - a strength contest or a one legged running race or who can eat the most dango), they sit with their legs dangling over the cliff edge. 

“So will you want to move on from me? Now that you’ve defeated me?”

“Our rivalry will be eternal,” Gai says, confidently.

“Ah.”

“There is no one else like you, Kakashi! So talented, and willing to cheer me on.”

Kakashi looks at him a moment, then back to the village. Gai wonders if Kakashi remembers when they first met.

Instead of asking, he drinks from his water bottle, wipes the rim and offers it to Kakashi. 

“If this is a ploy to see under my mask, it won’t work,” Kakashi says without even turning.

Gai almost reconsiders the entire rivalry, in that moment - if Kakashi has so seriously misunderstood him! “Why would I do that?”

“Plenty of people have.”

“That is to their shame,” Gai tells him, seriously. 

“You were in my bath, the other day.”

“To challenge you! For no other reason. I have no cause to pry into what doesn’t concern me.”

“You don’t want to have some kind of contest about who has the longer teeth?” He’s probably joking, but Gai considers it.

“We could cast moulds of our teeth, and never have to look.”

Kakashi keeps his eyes on the village, but then he nods, and takes the water.

Gai turns his head the other direction, and stays like that until he feels the metal of the bottle pressed to his hand.

“Thank you,” Kakashi says. 

“Ah, don’t thank me! I will challenge you tomorrow! And the next day. We will have many contests, and can’t be bogged down by thanks.” Gai gives him a thumbs up, like his father does, and Kakashi just nods again.

He will invite Kakashi home for dinner, he thinks, so they can have an eating contest. Kakashi is very thin, so Gai will probably win!

Eternal rivals, Gai thinks. This will be beneficial to the both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> jean valjean voice: WHO AM I???


End file.
